The Lake District National Park are looking to recruit a Farming Officer to help develop their work and relationship with the farming community. This will inlcude facilitating the development of a new farming taskforce with practical actions to support the delivery of the management plan for the Lake District.

Pressure on RPA will continue until all Farming Recovery Fund payments are made

Pressure on the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) from the Cumbrian Farm Flood Action Group will be maintained until sufficient resource is put in place to quickly deal with all outstanding Farming Recovery Fund applications.

Our previous post on this website constained a copy of the e-mail we sent to Liz Tuss, Minister Defra. Yesterday (11th May) we received the following reply:

Dear Viv

Thank you for your email of 25 April 2016 regarding the Basic Payment Scheme and representations you have received from the Federation of Cumbria Commoners and the National Sheep Association. We also received this correspondence from Tim Farron MP. I am forwarding below the response that was issued to Mr Farron.

We have just written to Liz Truss, Secretary of State Defra, Mark Grimshaw, CEO of RPA and our local MPs. We are asking for answers as to why no commoner has received their BPS 2015 payment yet. With the deadline for BPS 2016 applications coming up quickly, and commoners not having sight of their 2015 payment scehdule, we want assurances that their BPS 2016 claims will not be penalised as a result of RPA's maladministration.

Below is the text of the letter. We'll let you know when we get a response.

The Federation along with representatives of commons farmers are calling the Rural Payments Agency to be ’straight’ with commoners after they have failed to deliver on promises over the Basic Payment Scheme.

Julia Aglionby of the Foundation for Common Land, and a member of our commitee, warned the RPA's failings had put commons farmers, already facing a serious struggle, under ’extreme financial pressure’. She accused agency chief executive Mark Grimshaw falsely raising commoners’ hopes over the timing of their much-needed payment.